~ The metered movement of a fluttering heart

Once or Twice Around the Sun

You were a cool girl, too smooth for moves to sway that smile. You had a simple way of saying no to anything, a twist of the hips and quick slip of the tongue to keep interest in this. Those golden locks glowed in the sun, flowed when you flipped for fun, twirled between thumb and finger to have my eyes linger a little longer. You couldn’t do coy shyly; just a lie we toyed with to tease the tension into sweeter passion. A pastime we had no mind make habits of but we were bad at it; being broken and woken up by the shudders of others.

I wasn’t sending out signals, but there were still ghosts wavering up to ask questions. I was a hard host, saving up my frustrations to mask an ill-fitting outfit. You’d be thick witted, pretending haunting was daunting, cleaving or leaving us put out. It didn’t take a slap or shout, just a bat of lashes put past the last laconic quip. There’d be a gasp, a faint, a tawdry slip of respectable dialogue traveling along the course of the crowd. Now we’d be taken aback by the spirits peering at this play and shaking their sheer fists at our folly and foolhardy attempts at unstable and fabled romance.

But it wasn’t chance or trial that kept spiraling us back into a flaring dance. We were nearing a burning orbit, running a bit too fast to last in the night sky. We might truly wish to lie in the unruly velvet den but our constellation would flicker and fall apart before mariners could chart it. Our paths were countering revolutions relishing a crash and all the bombast that came with. We could watch that nova over and over again, eyes to heaven and hearts reliving that first meeting, that first parting, and all the stars falling besides.